I feel like it's really difficult to play most of the smaller nations recently

[Cathal341]

I have more than 4000 hours and I think the number of hours played isn't a warranty of a good post on the forum.

If you can't get an alliance with a major power, then just grow with other minor, give them lands in peace deal, with them growing with you, you can defeat easily any major country. It's normal for a major power to refuse an unhelpful alliance with a minor nation, you shouldn't be bother by it.

It's curious that you need to restart 10 times. It seems you're restarting until you're in a good enough starting position that you can quickly jump into the action - that is, declare your first easy war within 25 years.

As a tiny minor it's not uncommon to start the game with only another minor or two as allies, and then waiting half a century or more for your first opportunity to declare a war that you aren't nearly guaranteed to lose. It's years and years of doing mostly nothing - unless you've a neighboring bully that claims your clay.

I don't restart if I can't get alliances or jump in to a war straight away, I play until 1)I get Conquered or 2) Feel like I've barely expanded/developed by the late 1400s normally the first option happens before the second. As an example I tried Byzantium the other day and I think I did 10 starts. 2 of them actually started OK, Venice declared a trade war on my since I had them embargoed and I was able to take all Venetian lands in Greece the Balkans including there vassals land. None of it mattered tho since in every single run by 1450 Ottomans had declared war on me, wiped my army and I was being sieged down all because I couldn't get 1 decent Alliance to deter them for a couple of years. Like I expect to do at least a couple of restarts as Byzantium thats to be expected but 10 really? That's just one example, it happens when I try to play other minors near superpowers as well, I could play all these minors 2 patches ago but it was still a challenge and not easy at all maybe a restart or 2 due to bad RNG but I was fine with that.

 

[Vince75]

Well it depends. I suceeded first try to restore Basileus with Byzantium in 1.24. And it was my first time ever.

 

[Cathal341]

It's just occurred to me that difficulty level probably makes a big difference to your experience with this, so I'm making it explicit in the thread. I play on Hard (yeah I know I'm a scrub compared to you VH people, but I don't like the changes it makes to how the world pans out and I prefer to handicap myself with roleplaying, sue me) and it's the combination of -20 for diplomatic relations and -20 for difficulty which shuts off a lot of alliances which my instincts tell me I should be able to lever. (@saintlyknighted what do you play on?)

I think OP has a point - not that hardness is bad but that un-fun is bad, and sitting around waiting for an opportunity for half a century is un-fun. I think, if carried, this is a fair point. In the HRE and similar starts it's rarely going to be so bad because there's usually some other minors around with few or weak allies that you can get a CB on, but this isn't true in a lot of ROTW starts or with isolated little nations like Navarra.

I think it's not as bad as OP thinks - I've found that it's forced me to learn, make use of more tools, and make use of some strategies which I wouldn't normally consider such as no-CB wars, and once I've got ~40 development and borders with a few different nations things open up a bit more. But I've played only a few games in recent patches, all in Europe, Persia, and northern India, featuring plenty of confirmation bias. If the OP's had a bad few games I can definitely see how it could seem like a frustrating, anti-fun change.

@Cathal341 - have you considered trying games with a couple of HRE minors with the explicit aim of learning the new techniques small starts now require? I suspect if you resign yourself to ten hours of fiddling with notification settings and wondering 'can I get a border with X and set my attitude to threatened so that I can lever an alliance with X's rival Y' you'll be able to learn what you need to get started a bit faster with trickier minors.

I did a game as Gelre recently, formed Netherlands no problem conquered most of France and Britain while expanding a good bit into HRE lands, wasn't really a problem since HRE minors can normally get some pretty good alliances early on, Retired that when I decided I didn't have any more I wanted to do with it. I also managed to do an Arbil Game recently where I formed Persia and was at a stage where I was blobbing into India so I decided I was happy with how the run had went and also retired it. That was a bit more of a challenge than Gelre but still not impossible since you can get some ok early alliances to deter QQ til your ready to strike. None of that helped in my 3 most recent games (Byzantium, Lucca and Ryazan) tho, just constantly having to restart just killed all my drive.

 

[Cragspyder]

Byzantium, Granada and a few other tags that end up immediately under the gun of a powerful nation (due to missions etc.) are notorious for requiring restarts.

You may not know this if you don't frequent these forums, but every 20 hours or so there is a new thread asking how to win as Byzantium, decrying how difficult Byzantium is, Ottomans OP, etc.

The majority of answers consist of 'restart 10+ times until the stars align' except for two or three 5000+ hour EU4 professionals who will point out a strategy using 4 different obscure mechanics and the correct runestones to call in a comet with +5 shock and 30% RRC directly onto the Ottoman fort at Edirne.

Alliances as small nations are indeed more difficult now than before, you aren't wrong about that. But Byzantium....Byzantium never changes.

 

[Cathal341]

Byzantium, Granada and a few other tags that end up immediately under the gun of a powerful nation (due to missions etc.) are notorious for requiring restarts.

You may not know this if you don't frequent these forums, but every 20 hours or so there is a new thread asking how to win as Byzantium, decrying how difficult Byzantium is, Ottomans OP, etc.

The majority of answers consist of 'restart 10+ times until the stars align' except for two or three 5000+ hour EU4 professionals who will point out a strategy using 4 different obscure mechanics and the correct runestones to call in a comet with +5 shock and 30% RRC directly onto the Ottoman fort at Edirne.

Alliances as small nations are indeed more difficult now than before, you aren't wrong about that. But Byzantium....Byzantium never changes.

As mentioned I expect the Purple Phoenix to be somewhat hard but for other nations it shouldn't be the case that you have to play for 30 years die cause you can't get Alliances for deterring attacks and then restart then Repeat 6-7 times, it shouldn't be what the game encourages.

I personally believe the last few patches have really brought the game down in quality and enjoyment with too much focus on getting new features out for DLCs to make money and not fixing existing issues. Always felt like Paradox cared about their games but I'm now starting to realize they're like every other developer nowadays only caring about the money aspect. That's not just based on things in this thread either but rather everything that people seem to complain about on the forums. 1 Year ago there was never this much complaining so somethings changed in either the company or the dev teams approach since then.

 

[Metroidkirby]

it shouldn't be what the game encourages.

The game encourages you to play as the ottomans, not as an OPM nor a dead country. It's hard, yes, it's supposed to be hard. Byz is almost impossible, seems coherent, Byz is already in a better shape in game than it was in reality.

 

[Cathal341]

The game encourages you to play as the ottomans, not as an OPM nor a dead country. It's hard, yes, it's supposed to be hard. Byz is almost impossible, seems coherent, Byz is already in a better shape in game than it was in reality.

The game should encourage you to play any country you want.

Also I don't see why people keeping making it out that this is another "Byzantium is too hard forum post" it's not, I used them as an example because 1)Probably the minor most people are familiar with and 2)I played as them recently so there on my mind. Read up if you want to see my thoughts on Byzantium and give me something thats not "Byzantiums suppose to be Hard" in response to the OP.

 

[ringhloth]

Guys I'm not saying it should be easy, just that I shouldn't have to restart 10 times to get one good run. Its very annoying when I play for 30mins - 1hr and get nowhere. I've been playing since mid 2015 so I've done my fair share of playthroughs as minors, some of my favorites where done as minors but what I'm saying now is it's just really unfun to play as them.

I think this is a legitimate complaint. Minors should be tough, but restarting day one because the AI didn't have just the right attitudes is bad. I'm not sure a good solution exists, but I do think it's important to acknowledge it's a problem.

 

[The-Doc]

Why should larger nations want to go to bat for you?

 

[Horn and Ivory]

Ryazan has always been a nightmare if you don't get a Muscovy alliance fairly early, doubly so if the Ottomans get into the Crimea. But I'm a bit perplexed as to why Gelre was fine but Lucca coldn't get started. What happened?

Honestly the fact that the last patch was a free one which included a bunch of optimisation fixes (which I at least notice) and modding help counts against the theory that the Devs are only interested in cashing in at the expense of player experience. I'd also claim that Rights of Man & the addition of institutions - which is still recent history as far as I'm concerned - was one of the best patches/DLCs the game's ever had. Though there's a lot of complaining on the forums 'backlash to people complaining' is still also a fixture and while it's sometimes misplaced it often shows a love of the game. Hell, the fact that a thread on this forum can get so many posts of arguing and complaining shows that the game still has us captivated.

You say, 'The game should encourage you to play any country you want'; it's very hard not to read this, given the other things you've said, as saying 'every country should be viable - indeed, it should be possible to expand a decent amount within 50 years - with roughly the same palate of strategies'. I agree with the first but not the second. Indeed, the second seems quite contrary to the basic philosophy of the game.

If nothing else I feel like the AI is smarter rather than stupider, and while it might be frustrating that it won't help you out in certain situations, I find it hard to be annoyed about that.

 

[TenshiN]

Its difficult, yet not impossible. The minor strats getting more difficult are mostly from the AI getting somewhat better in dplomacy. Why should it ally some obscure minor when it can ally major countries/countries with more immediate strategic perspective instead of you? The Paradox won't handhold your Byzantium playthrough with making countries to ally you in situations in which they have no reason to.
Honestly, thats kinda like complaining Ethiopia is hard in Hearts of Iron, or Sikkim is nigh unplayable in Victoria2.

 

[Kergan]

As an example I tried Byzantium the other day and I think I did 10 starts. 2 of them actually started OK, Venice declared a trade war on my since I had them embargoed and I was able to take all Venetian lands in Greece the Balkans including there vassals land. None of it mattered tho since in every single run by 1450 Ottomans had declared war on me, wiped my army and I was being sieged down all because I couldn't get 1 decent Alliance to deter them for a couple of years.

Then you were greedy and should have peaced out earlier and/or never considered your options to singlehandedly beat the Ottomans as Byzantium.

Tip: take Corfu and another island (Negroponte or the other one) in your war against Venice. And start a few heavies early on to have a stronger fleet that the Ottomans. Bait its armies on the islands (don't hesitate to sacrifice a stack if needed), and keep the stacks there with your naval superiority while you siege the Ottoman down for 100% WS. No alliances necessary.

 

[Mr. G]

The AI is getting smarter for every patch. However, it is still not that good at expanding enough in order to beat a player at the later phase of the game.

 

[ShadeThorn]

completely off topic but since this thread inspired me to play an HRE prince, I have a question about memmingen. If the emperor asks me to return land and i refuse, how serious are the consequences?

 

[Horn and Ivory]

completely off topic but since this thread inspired me to play, I have a question about memmingen. If the emperor asks me to return land and i refuse, how serious are the consequences?

It's unlikely the emperor will attack you, but if you keep doing it the opinion penalty with HRE members will add up (and it takes a heck of a long time to go away unless you have a lot of BROT modifiers).

 

[Twoflower]

The game should encourage you to play any country you want.

The game should allow you to play any country you want. It neither has to nor should it make any country you want equally easy to play.

It actually makes sense to want the countries that the game's provides special content for and that its advertising (the dev diaries, special features, "patch titles", loading screen pictures etc.) is focussed on to be interesting and somewhat challenging to play. Recent patches have gone in the right direction regarding this, to a certain extent. Of course, making "major" countries challenging/non-trivial to play inevitably means that playing a non-major, and even more so a one- or two-province minor will be a lot harder. This is reasonable and actually good
If you are frustrated playing as Byzantium or Navarra, why don't you try playing as, say, Venice or Aragon?

 

[schondetta]

I blame the arbitrary "too many diplomatic relations" modifer that was added to the game patches back because reasons?

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

It's not arbitrary, it represents an unwillingness to go over the relations limit. The AI no longer keeps a free relations slot for the player, which is completely fair.

 

[Vulkandrache]

The AI is getting smarter for every patch

The thing that happened with the AI this patch isnt "getting smarter".

They unlocked the magic shield that kept the AI from recognizing the players expansion as a threat to their existents on anthing lower that VH.
While that sounds like a good thing and it might well be it has led to the game becoming more frustrating than challenging
mainly because it leads to alliances and guarantees which look arbitrary.
Examples:

Ming and Otto ally because i as Japan conquered some Persian land.

Transoxiana and Ottos ally because i as England no-CB Georgia for coring range.

Blobbed Russia guarantees 3pm remains of Ottomans which i couldnt full annex because 100% WS.

Otto and AQ allied, Attack Otto, peace out AQ for anull treaty, peace out Otto 100%. Before my 6 year truce with AQ is over Ottos guarantee them.



This behavior leads to you having to fight the same countries over and over again for no real gain.
Having to walk from Trebizond to Samarkand to kick Transoxiana out of my wars 3 times because they keep allying the 2pms around the Caucasus looks so stupid.
They get nothing out of it, get thrashed, loose manpower and get their money taken away. In the end they get attacked by other nations and end up disappearing.

Add to that the reduced movement speed which basically killed the game for me because i now fall asleep even at speed 4 waiting for armies to arrive.

 

[DonVoss]

Add to that the reduced movement speed which basically killed the game for me because i now fall asleep even at speed 4 waiting for armies to arrive.

Oh that one is soo annoying. You attack a weak Nation, Day 1 you sent your Armies against them, but they still manage to get away in a neighbouring Province and thus the endless Chase through your own country has started, because fuck Forts, right? When you finally give up, they split up and begin Carpet sieging your land, which has no fortcontrol and boy these motherfucker know exaclty where your weak spots are. Only to assemble as soon as you start moving in their direction. For me, most wars i don't fight a single Battle anymore, just siege them up, while they are on vacation in my homelands and peace them out, as soon as their own army strenght doesn't matter anymore for peacedeal acceptance